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Trek Ambassador Race Report: Ben Marshall at the Tathra Enduro

I arrived in Saturday afternoon at the sleepy town
of Tathra, keen for my first 100km race in 3yrs, and eager to put in a solid
performance. The town had obviously come
alive with the race, as over 300 mountain bikers made the trek to the coastal
town. After a visit to the beach and
registering at the event centre we headed back to Bega where we were staying
the night, before heading down to the local pub for a feed. One hour later, loaded with pasta and sticky
date pudding, we rolled up to our room and crawled into bed.

One disadvantage with the 100km format is the
earlier start time of 7.30, which means an even earlier wake up time of 5.45!
Ridiculous, but this minor speed hump was overcome, and I arrived at the event
centre with about 45min to spare for a quick coffee, which I promptly spilt all
over my car boot, before dropping some drink bottles off and rolling around for
a warm up. Rolling up to the event
briefing we were greeted with the news that it would be a Le Mans start, a 80m
sprint to the other end of the field.
This turned out to be pretty good for me as I entered the single track
in about 5th place. This only
lasted for about 1km before a fire road pinch where the rider behind me charged
in front before the next single track.
The next 9km were all single track, which proved costly as the two guys
in front of me were unable to hold the wheel of the front four leaders. I managed to pass both of them before the
final single track descent into transition and opened up a gap between
them. Coming back into transition for
the first time, I grabbed a drink bottle of Andy (official bottle holder), and
began the chase to the lead guys. After
a long tar/fire road section I hit a short single track section before crossing
the road, where an official told me that I was about 30sec behind the
leaders. Once across the road, the single
track turned to fire roads, and the gradient soon became steep as we hit some
of the tougher climbing in the race.
Just before the first feed station at the 35km mark I caught one of the
guys who had been dropped from the lead group.
I worked with him until the 50km feed station back at transition where
Andy had a very stale honey sandwich for me and two more drink bottles. I rolled out of transition with my new riding
pal before we hit a mown track around some undulating hills along some of the
local properties. At this point the lead
guys were about 5mins ahead of us, and we could see them climbing up around the
other side of the hill that we were descending.
On the next climb, I dropped my partner and opened up the gap in the
single track, as I climbed up out of the transition area again. At this point I was feeling good and my
nutrition plan seemed to be working just fine, as I tried to conserve energy in
all of the single track that was in the second lap. I kept flowing through the single track
before I arrived at the feed station at the 80km mark where I halted to grab my
drink bottle. However this was another
little mistake that I made, as I ended up grabbing some other poor suckers
drink bottle (I am sorry to this guy if you are reading this). I promptly gulped down a mouthful and quickly
realised that this was definitely not my bottle, but rather some strange
concoction that someone thought tasted good.
Each to their own though. However
this was all I had for the final 20km, so I had to suck it up and drink it, as
anything is better than nothing at this point in the race. Just past the feed station the signs soon
started popping up letting me know how far I had to go, and it wasn’t till the
10km to go point that I started to long for the finish line, and instead of
consuming another gel I just kept pushing on.
My muscles disagreed with this decision and with 5km to go I finally
cracked in the constant single track, making the last 5km seem like 20.

Despite this I crossed the line in 4th
position (4hr 33), about 10min behind the lead group of three which stayed
together until the final sprint. My bike
was awesome during the race and was perfect for the awesome single track that
Tathra had on offer. I was pretty happy
with the result, with my nutrition plan working well until the last 10km, and
with the beach being just 50m across the road, it was a good end to the race.